PLANNING THE LOGO AND THE HOUSE STYLE FOR MY MAGAZINE

In this post I will be planning the logo and the house style for my magazine. I will include suggestions about ; the name of the magazine, the font and size, type of language, use of colour and layout. This part of my planning will be based on my research as well as the codes and conventions of pop music magazines. I will make decisions about all these different elements. This will make my further construction much easier and quicker. 

  TITLE SUGGESTIONS:

BEAT / B.E.A.T

I quite like this magazine title as it's short, meaning it could be easily memorable. It also contains a clear link to music, however to me the 'beat' itself would not be very recognisable by the audience as it seems to be not strong enough. I simply think it's not as catchy as it could be. To develop it even further I was thinking about placing the dots within the letter to then form an acronym which will make the title more interesting and memorable. The acronym would be focused around the 'motto' of the magazine. 

STEREO

Stereo is another magazine title. Similarly to the first idea I think this title is not strong enough, although it shows a clear relation to the music. This is why I am thinking about combining the 'Beat' and the 'Stereo' together in order to get ' Stereo Beat'. I think this composition will be more effective as it will allow me to be more creative within developing my logo. Besides, the composition of both words also makes a big difference as it makes both titles of the magazine much stronger and memorable. 

 DYNAMIC 

The last suggestion is titled 'Dynamic'. This is another title which I quite like as it automatically builds up a positive thinking full of energy and joyful people in a lively wild environment such as club or festival. Besides, I like this title as it evokes reaction and thoughts inside readers minds, however for someone who doesn't known that the magazine is based on music the title won't be a strong clue as it does not show a clear relation to it.

In conclusion, I think all three title suggestions have positives and negatives however I have decided that I am going to combine 'Stereo' and 'Beat' together. This will allow me to create a creative logo design which will reinforce the relation to music even further. I am planning to make the logo quite vintage but at the same time minimalistic using no more than three colours. The logo itself will show a clear link to my house style. 


CONSTRUCTION PROCESS 

Here are some print screens from the construction process of my logo. During this process I experimented with using different font sizes as well as different types of fonts and designs. My aim was to reinforce the relation to music as well to create a minimalistic logo with no more than three colours  as I mentioned during my planning.

This is a print screen representing the first version of my logo. I really like this font due to the sharp edged style but also the 'O' letter which is different front others. This is effective as the central letter creates some type of separation between two words, although they are joined together. Another element which I found effective, was the minimalism of colours. The white and black together creates a classic composition.

This is my second logo design, in which I focused on separating the two words together.  Using Photoshop I placed both words within a    rectangle which I then cropped to separate them. Within the 'stereo' word I kept the filling of the box white and the colour of the font black. I followed the opposite process for the 'beat' word. This created a wob effect, which I find very effective due to the expressive contrast. At the end I joined both words together. This worked really well as I managed to bring attention towards both words. This allowed me to create a minimalistic effect.

Although, I was quite happy with the logo version above I still wanted to add a detail which will directly link the logo to music. Within some letters of the 'Aristotle Punk' font which I used, the letters inside were filled in with colour. This could be also seen within the letter 'O' which is the central focus within the logo composition. I've decided to add an image of a vinyl CD which will add a small, red detail to my composition.

In the final stage I am planning to slightly blur in the vinyl CD, as at the moment it doesn't match the tone of the black used within the letters. However, I am planning to leave the composition as it is  now. I am quite happy with it as it's very simplistic and minimalistic. Within my further research I am planning to use the colour scheme of ; white, black and red in order to create the house style for my magazine. I will be linking the logo design to my house style plan. 

 

 

This is my final version of the magazine logo. In the last stage I worked on the vinyl CD. I applied 'Ink Outline' filter which made the image very similar to the font style. This worked really well as I only had to play around with the brightness and contrast in order to fit it into the whole design. I am really happy with the final outcome of the logo as it's very contrasting and expressive.